Few games have fought their way back from a crisis as strongly as Fallout 76. But how good is the game now – and what has changed? MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus spoke with Creative Director Jon Rush for our Grindfest theme week 2026 about the development of the survival game.
That Fallout 76 had a rocky launch is something everyone probably knows by now. A good portion of potential fans likely wrote off the game shortly after its release.
However, too stubborn to accept defeat, Bethesda chose to address the issues, polish the game, and gradually supply it with new content. A significant turning point was Wastelanders, which finally introduced human NPCs.
Nevertheless, Fallout 76 went under the radar for a long time for many gamers – and even I lost track of it for a while. For about 5 years, I hardly checked in, until I recently felt the urge to dive back in. Coincidentally, Bethesda offered us an interview with the head honcho himself.
Fallout 76 has evolved significantly, and that is reflected in the ratings, which started at a meager “mostly negative” at the Steam launch, but are now “mostly positive”. In the conversation, Jon Rush reveals to me which features are responsible for this positive change and what has attracted most of the new players. Small spoiler: it was not an update, nor was it a DLC.
In this week, you can expect exciting articles daily revolving around the topic of MMORPGs. Included are: nostalgic retrospectives, exciting analyses from prominent industry veterans, previews of upcoming online role-playing games, and entertaining streams.
Here’s the program for the big MMORPG theme week 2026 by MeinMMO
“The most important new feature came with Wastelanders”
MeinMMO: I always wanted to come back, but somehow never really managed to do it. Why should I give the game another chance after 5 years?
Rush: I think we’ve just released our 67th free update since the game launched. About 25 of those have been major content updates. For people who haven’t played in a few years, or even just one or two years, the game is drastically different from launch.
When [Fallout 76] launched, people expected the first chapter of Appalachia, and with every major beat we’ve released since, we’ve told the next chapter of the story.
And players also get to tell their own stories. Returning after a few years, there’s so much Appalachia to experience, many new things, many new friends to find, maybe new enemies, who knows? I always say: There’s no better time to explore the wasteland with friends, and I mean that. The game just keeps getting better and better.
MeinMMO: You just mentioned an interesting number. Are you planning anything special for the 76th update?
Rush: Oh yes! The 76th update… I can’t say too much yet, but players will be very excited when it comes out.
MeinMMO: I’m looking forward to it! You just talked about many of the updates that have been released since launch. What feature do you think is the best that you’ve implemented?
Rush: The most important new feature or addition probably came with Wastelanders. When the game was released, there were no human NPCs in the world. You learned about these characters by talking to some of the Mr. Handys that were left behind or by finding corpses and reading notes, seeing where they lived. You could learn something about these people, but they were either dead or missing.
Wastelanders brought back these characters, people who have seen what’s going on in Appalachia and wanted to settle there, which gave us as storytellers more tools to tell more engaging stories within this game space. Wastelanders was probably the most important update.
“One of the most important changes since Wastelanders”
MeinMMO: I’d like to interject here. A few weeks ago, we played together and especially the quests didn’t seem to be tracked for both of us. Progress isn’t shared, is that correct?
Rush: No, quest progress isn’t shared. It goes to whoever is leading the group.
MeinMMO: Do you have plans to change that? Because… that’s a bit of a blocker for many co-op players.
Rush: We had conversations about it, discussed ways to make that happen. But due to when the game launched and because that wasn’t considered from the get-go, it would be quite a substantial technical effort. It’s not impossible, but it would come at the cost of other updates like more raids or further region expansions, that kind of thing.
MeinMMO: Wastelanders wasn’t just a turning point, but the time when most players came to the game and stayed – at least based on what we observed. What change has been the most important since then?
Rush: I would say there are a few, and some of those might sound funny now. But the first one would probably be raids. Gleaming Depths, not because of the raid itself, but because the focus was on our veteran players, those who had been fighting the queen of the scorched beasts for years and found it easy, wanted a bigger challenge.
Giving players this kind of update – I remember watching streamers when the raids first came out and they kept dying over and over but said: “This is great!” They had fun; they wanted that challenge. This kind of update, something with this level of difficulty, encouraged us to do more of those kinds of things in future updates to come. That was probably one of the most important changes for our players since Wastelanders.
On the other hand, and this might sound strange now, Gone Fishin’, the fishing feature, I think was a central update. Not because of the fishing itself, but because you can whip out your fishing rod wherever you can swim.
As a player, when I hear something like that, I think: “Oh, there’s water all over the map.” That refreshes the entire map, making players want to go out and explore, rediscover Appalachia, places they haven’t seen in years. In other interviews, I’ve used the word “densifying”: that is, densifying the existing experience on the map.
These are the Gleaming Depths:
Rush: Fishing has done just that; it took the existing map and expanded it with a layer of experience that players could engage in. Using that as inspiration for things to come has been a fundamental moment for the project.
On the PTS, we just have Infestations, which I’ve already said internally: That’s like fishing, only without water and without fish. And the fish bite back. People get the opportunity to go out and explore all these areas again, even if they’ve been there before, to see: Who lives there now? What rewards do I get for driving them out? A somewhat long answer, but raids for endgame and fishing for enriching the existing game world.
MeinMMO: Raids are probably just the thing that disappointed me a bit because they were initially just little dungeons for good loot, but short. I’ve heard they have changed significantly, and you just talked about it. But what exactly is better now? Because that’s the thing I’m most looking forward to.
Rush: Initially, we came up with a few raids, but they were only similar in name. This one, Gleaming Depths, is more of a team-based task. You are rewarded for going in as a group. Some of the mechanics you encounter there require a team. And because it’s harder, more demanding than just bullet sponges from the old raid and dungeon attempts, it’s also more rewarding.
We’re using Gleaming Depths as a base to present the next step towards more power for players: the 4-star legendaries. Those are the big changes: the fights are more mechanics-based, requiring a team and coordination, and you get the chance to reach the next power level.
“When Season 1 of the series launched, it was something of a reminder for people”
MeinMMO: From a business perspective, Fallout 76 had a pretty rough start, but that’s a long time ago now, and the game has improved a lot since then, including player reviews. But what about the player base? Has it grown too? And which DLC had the biggest impact?
Rush: I think players who have stuck around have experienced firsthand how the game has steadily improved. I remember when I held a press event in London for the Ghoul update; the first picture I showed was a picture of all the updates we’ve brought over the years. The press was just like: “We didn’t know that. It’s all free? Crazy!”
Since then, players have stayed, and a few more joined, you know, through word of mouth, as the game got better and ran more stable, the Game Pass, and things like that, making it more accessible.
But when Season 1 of the series launched, it was something of a reminder for people who know the games, or like an “aha” moment for those who didn’t know there were games. Both liked the storytelling of the show and wanted more of it. So, people came to Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, they experienced a massive spike due to the series.
More on the player spike from the series:
People joined, experienced these stories, had fun with the unique wasteland in Appalachia. And a good portion of them just stayed. Between Season 1 and 2, a few “Quality of Life” updates came out, players could become ghouls, we let players fish, opened Burning Springs, bounties…
The player base continued to grow, and then Season 2 came along. With that came even more players. Some returned who had vanished after Season 1, wanting more. Perhaps those were just people who enjoyed Season 2 and thus came into contact with Fallout.
I remember sitting in a restaurant in Rockville, with my phone lying on the table. It had a case, and the waiter just said: “Oh, I love Fallout!” I then asked which was his favorite game, and he asked confused: “Is that a game?”
There are many people like that, and we’re lucky that the creators of the series are real Fallout fans and respected that flair and lore that they reflect in their stories.
That was a long answer, but I hope it answers your question.
MeinMMO: I think so, yes! The series certainly had a great impact; we’ve noticed that here as well. And while I listen to you, I always wish I had more time to play. Of course, I play a lot for work myself, but I can rarely focus on just one game.
Rush: Yes, exactly. Especially playing MMOs is a real time investment. I’m grateful for every bit of time you can spend in our game; it doesn’t have to be much.
The Fallout series will even get a third season. You can see the trailer for the second season here:
“We don’t want to tell players how to play”
MeinMMO: I even played recently and had a lot of fun! Just my old builds, I couldn’t get back into them; I didn’t understand anything from that anymore.
Rush: Hmm, we’ve adjusted a lot of the balance since you last played. Basically, you have to completely remake your build.
MeinMMO: Many of the perks that exist now have also been changed, at least from what I still know. Back then, I played a power armor minigun build. I’m not sure how that would play today.
Rush: Yes, many of the changes we’ve made… I always tell the team: We don’t want to tell players how to play. They should play how they want.
From that original selection of perks, players somehow only chose from two different specs: it was either a “bloody” build or not. That was it. Introducing new legendaries, three- and four-star legendaries, adjusting them, more perk cards, adapting perks, allowing players to become ghouls… there are now dozens of viable ways to play.
I was at an event a few months ago, and I saw someone running around with the Assaultron head, melting enemies. I thought to myself: Damn, that’s cool! Someone really found a way to make that a viable weapon.
If you dive back in now, I would probably recommend picking a weapon you like and then building your spec from there.
MeinMMO: Now I want to make some kind of alien blaster build.
Rush: Oh yes! We even have an alien gun now.
MeinMMO: Oh, nice! I urgently need more time. But… I’ve strayed a bit from my questions and need to return to them. I think you’ve expanded the map twice. How much bigger can Appalachia still get, both in narrative choices and technical limitations?
Rush: We’ve actually expanded the map even more often. Technically speaking, four times: Skyline Valley, the large region in the south. Then Burning Springs, which borders where Ohio used to be. When we added player ghouls, we extended the map northward to reveal their camp. And even for fishing, we slightly extended the map eastward because we didn’t want to trample on the spots where people have built their camps.
We still have plenty of map left to play with if we want to do more region expansions. There are several places we could still go. It somewhat depends on the kind of story we want to tell next. What will the next chapter be? From there, we decide the location and its tone.
As for technical limits… not really. There are always precautions we need to take for performance reasons when we expand the map. But since our player base is capped at 24 players per server, that makes it a bit easier to expand outwards and support that with new creatures and such. In terms of ideas and writing, I think one of the best things about working at Bethesda is how creative everyone is. We have no shortage of ideas.
I’m currently looking at a whiteboard here that I’d love to show you. The secrets of the universe, full of ideas! Unfortunately, 90% of them I have to say “no” to because we just don’t have the time. Or maybe it doesn’t fit the kind of update we want to do next.
We have a roadmap with plans for many coming years, and from here it will only get bigger. No shortage of ideas. The players who are playing can look forward to a lot.
“I would love to bring this PvP with no stakes to the map someday”
MeinMMO: That immediately takes away my next question about how long the game will continue to be supported. But what you just said about “not trampling on players’ building sites” is something I appreciate. Do you know Enshrouded? Water was introduced there a while ago, and our base was… kind of flooded because it was in the middle of a lake that was added afterwards. So I’m even more glad that you think about those little things.
Rush: Yes, we’ve had updates before that destroyed building sites due to changes to the map. But we are very aware of this because our players are builders. All of them. Adventurers, builders, that’s how they tell their stories. We don’t want to interfere with that. It doesn’t always work out, but I think most of the time we do pretty well.
MeinMMO: I’d like to explore potential updates a bit because I remember the battle royale mode you had a while ago. I really liked that. Probably the mode didn’t have too many players, but those who did really loved it. Low stakes, high rewards, great rewards without losing anything. Is that something that might come back?
Rush: Nuclear Winter was a good feature. What we learned from that, because it was Bethesda’s first foray in this direction, along with the multiplayer Fallout game, is that such a thing is a completely different service that needs to be supported. With our team size, we wouldn’t have been able to handle that: new game modes, maps, rewards, and of course fixing bugs and exploits. We lacked the people for that, and additionally, we divided our player base. Instead of coming to Appalachia and playing together, they came to play Nuclear Winter.
We know that there was a group of people who really liked it, this risk-free PvP with just cool rewards. But since we knew we couldn’t support it, we turned it off. Nuclear Winter didn’t have a big but a very vibrant player base.
What I’ve learned in the last few years is that our players really like staying on the Appalachia map. I learned this from expeditions, which were supposed to take players to Atlantic City or Pittsburgh. A few times you do that because it’s kind of nice, but then you’d rather stay where you have an influence on the world. They can do that in Appalachia.
I would love to bring this “PvP with no stakes” to the map someday. What exactly that will look like, I have no idea. But it wouldn’t be punishing for players. You could opt-in, and of course, there would be unique rewards that you could only get through participation. Just like Nuclear Winter. But without fracturing the player base. Maybe with benefits they could take to their camps, on their adventures with friends.
I know there’s a demand for it, and we’ll do something for it; I just can’t say what that will be yet.
MeinMMO: I could imagine a kind of raider outpost cage fight for 10 people or something.
Rush: That would surely be fun!
“We take the opportunity to create new factions”
MeinMMO: Speaking of raiders, for me, the Brotherhood of Steel has been the best expansion of the whole game because I’m a huge fan of the Brotherhood. My favorite faction across all Fallout games. However, you’ve introduced a few new factions since then, even before that. Factions that never existed before, like the Settlers. Why did you decide not to bring back any of the established factions that we know from other Fallout games?
Rush: [Fallout] 76 takes place farthest in the past. It’s a few hundred years removed from New Vegas. It makes sense that Caesar’s Legion, for example, hasn’t existed yet. Or when I look at something else in that region, there are fewer organized groups of raiders or something like that.
Because of that difference in time and geography, we’re not insisting that we can’t add pre-existing groups but take the opportunity to create new ones, like the Free States. That makes 76 and Appalachia a bit more special, unique than some of the other games than if we were just bringing back factions.
The Brotherhood of Steel, of course, made sense and helped to expand their story […] We have opportunities to enrich the backstory of existing factions like the Enclave, for example, the Brotherhood or just the raiders. We can talk about where they actually come from.
Time and distance are the reasons, I would say, why there are so many other factions in Fallout 76 than those that people know from the other Fallouts.
Here you can find my beloved lore piece on the Brotherhood of Steel. You can watch the trailer for the Steel Dawn update below:
“The community is what makes this game special”
MeinMMO: The Enclave was, I think, one of the things I didn’t know before, even though I’m a Fallout fan. I only found out through research that they actually existed before and played a significant role. […] But I’d like to return to the multiplayer aspect because I skipped one of my questions. There are still many players playing on various platforms. What are your plans for cross-progression?
Rush: Cross-progression is something we’ve often discussed and still discuss frequently. Having it in the game is something we should’ve considered from the get-go when we first started working on it over ten years ago. Back then, it wasn’t as big a deal as it is today.
There are ways to achieve it. But we’re trying to find a way that isn’t too technically intensive. Doing something like that would come at the cost of many updates. It’s definitely not impossible, but we’re trying to find a way to achieve it meaningfully, delivering good content to our players without sacrificing a feature like that.
I know that’s often requested, but that’s also the case with new content. We’re trying to find the balance and constantly talking about it.
MeinMMO: You just said that the Fallout series has caused a big surge of new players. If there are currently players looking for a new game, what would you say sets Fallout 76 apart from the other Fallout titles, maybe even Fallout 5, or from competitors like Dune? Why should I play Fallout 76?
Rush: The community. The community is what makes this game special. Seriously. Bethesda has just the best community in all of gaming. When we were working on this game, we thought: “Oh, people want to kill each other. Let’s let them do that.”
And now it’s the complete opposite. They want to help each other, build together, have adventures, explore… they give new players items, take them to their camps. The community fuels us in a way. They have helped us make this game what it is.
As I said earlier: this is Bethesda’s first attempt at a multiplayer Fallout game. It took years to get to know our community and for the community to get to know us. Their involvement, enthusiasm, and support have been a huge factor in what the game has become so far.
If players want a Fallout game with the same great Fallout story, a unique setting in Appalachia that has never existed in a Fallout game before, want to find friends on their journey, and want to be part of a community, then Fallout 76 is the game for them.
MeinMMO: This quote from Todd Howard remains one of my favorites in all of gaming, this: “We created a post-apocalyptic world where all our players do is be nice to each other.” That defined Fallout 76 for me back then.
Rush: Yes! Exactly! That gives humanity a bit of hope.
MeinMMO: Right! Now you’ve got me a bit hyped, and I think you can do the same with other players. If you could give one piece of advice to new players, what would it be?
Rush: I would definitely not advise them to go to the Deathclaw Island. The signs don’t lie; it’s really dangerous there.
But one piece of advice for new players: don’t rush. Take your time. Explore. Talk to NPCs. Do things with other players. This isn’t a race to the end of the story because the story never ends. Our players are always creating new stories. Take your time and enjoy the setting, try out different playstyles, experiment with crafting, just try everything to get a feel for what this Fallout has to offer.
MeinMMO: Thank you very much!
Did you play Fallout 76 before? What does it mean to you? Why haven’t you tried it – and are you now perhaps planning a trip to Appalachia? Write us a comment!
Bethesda has put a lot of effort into polishing Fallout 76, and apparently, it has paid off if the game is supposed to continue for a while. We have already spoken with the makers about a subject that apparently many fans of the games and the series are burning to know: We asked Bethesda how heavy the Power Armor from Fallout really is
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